


Shadows

by gelishan



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Gen, X3, movie coda, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-29
Updated: 2006-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-20 13:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gelishan/pseuds/gelishan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yelling means there will be a wait to see the Professor, so he freezes his sweat-beads and listens to them clatter to the floor, sinking against the wall beside them. Cold is his home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows

There's no class when the sky over Xavier's darkens, so Bobby sits by the door of Professor Munroe's office. The strange extended edges of his awareness tell him that rain is about to fall, that there is mold beginning to grow in the wall, that his exhausted sweat is condensing against the wood of the door-frame. But those shards of awareness melt against the harsh yelling inside the office. Yelling means there will be a wait to see the Professor, so he freezes his sweat-beads and listens to them clatter to the floor, sinking against the wall beside them. Cold is his home.

The last time he heard yelling from her office, it was raining, too. But Rogue had just gone away again, and no one knew where she was. Kitty had wrinkled up her forehead and sunk a few inches into her chair when he asked. Logan had just grunted.

After combing the building for her a third time Bobby had heard the yelling from Professor Munroe's office. He'd paused, wondering if he should go in and try to help, but the voices were too hard in his ears, so he went outside and started freezing the rain. Not in blasts like when he was fighting: a meditation, Professor X had called it, a way of clearing his head. He closed his eyes and concentrated, feeling each individual drop of comforting cold around him, and he gently reached out with his power. The raindrops fell to the ground around him with a rattle like plastic cartridges from a dart gun.

The night of that rain, he couldn't think over the rattling in his memory, and he never went out to freeze raindrops again. Not even when Rogue came back looking fifteen years younger, transformed with delight.

It had been raining more, lately, meaning he had more and more to think about. Because he'd figured it out, by now, why the weatherman had been wrong so much lately. Professor Munroe was angry.

"Concentrate on control," he remembers Professor X saying. "Don't let your power control you." His voice was soft, commanding. Bobby had liked listening to him talk. The voices now are different.

"...absolutely out of your mind!" Bobby hears her say, muffled through the oak door.

"You don't seem to understand the difficulty of the position we are in, Ororo." It takes him longer to place the second voice: after all, he hasn't heard Dr. McCoy anywhere but on television for some months now. "The legislature has passed in both the House and the Senate. We need the students. We need people who are innocent, people no one would believe ill of--"

"Plenty of people would believe ill of our students. That's why this school was founded."

"You're missing my point, Professor."

Bobby wants to feel afraid or outraged, listening to them argue, but he just feels cold. Then again, maybe that's a good thing. Cold keeps him safe. Cold you know where you are.

"The veto is out of our hands," she says. "We have played our part. We gave the president papers years ago indicating that the mutants were not a threat. We cannot-"

"We can and we will, Professor!" His voice is louder than Bobby's ever heard it. Sharpened. "Listen to me! The safety of the mutant population, the safety of human-mutant relations, is our responsibility. Do you understand?"

There is a noise like a thump against the wall: Bobby can almost hear her jaw setting, see her clenched fist. "They can come here," she says firmly. "It's safe for mutants here."

"It should be safe for mutants outside this facility as well, Professor Munroe." Beast never raises his voice, but Bobby can hear the frustration in it now. "That is what we are fighting for."

"X-Men don't fight." Her voice is barely audible through the door. "They protect."

But that's not right, either, because what was the Danger Room for if not to practice fighting? X-Men fight. They just don't kill.

The X-Men weren't defending Worthington Labs: they were fighting the Brotherhood. Fighting for a government that, instead of allowing for choice, shot mutants full of the "cure" for their "problem"; fighting against a group which only wanted the inhumanity to stop. (A funny word, "inhumanity.") Fighting as if they had forgotten everything else.

The only person they'd protected was the boy who stole powers. Bobby met him once after the fight: he was quiet, and hurt. He reminded Bobby of his childhood: sitting in his room at home, willing himself to throw out his first attempt to make ice cream (it was more like a popsicle) before his parents could catch him. But the hiding and the hurt had made him stronger, and more empathetic, and Rogue had thrown it all away because she couldn't see what they were really trying to protect.

He was glad they had protected the boy. But the Brotherhood was protecting all of mutantkind.

Sometimes, Bobby misses John. The way he would smirk and flick his lighter, the way the flames would cast weird flickering shadows, deepening shades of orange and grey, around the room. Without him, the world seems flat and unexplained and not worth fighting for at all.

The ice on the door-frame is falling apart by the time Professor Munroe lets him in.


End file.
